Can we win this thing?

The SES tracking poll has been updated, and now the Conservatives are four points ahead of the Liberals - and in terms of personal popularity, Harper is just one lousy point behind Martin.

In the post below, there's an interesting debate going on about Stephen Harper's chances of becoming Prime Minister. When Sari Stein wrote that Harper "doesn't have a chance in hell" of winning, I thought she meant that he was too right wing. What she really means, however, is that you can't form a government in Canada without doing well in Quebec:

In Quebec, the Liberals' lost support is going to the Bloc. In the ROC, it's going mainly to the Conservatives. That puts the Conservatives higher in the popular vote but the fact is, the Tories would be really lucky to pick up even a single seat in Quebec. During the Mulroney years, the Tories consistently needed to do well in Quebec in order to win elections. Harper isn't at that stage... not yet. Maybe in 5 years he will have mustered that support. And it was easier in pre-Bloc years for another party to win votes here in La Belle Province.
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So votes does not equal seats, as you well know. And in this case, I just don't see the Conservatives getting the seats they need to elect a government. They simply don't have the necessary support in Quebec to win seats here, and no government can win without Quebec's support. That's just a political reality on the Federal stage.

This has been true in the past, with the Liberals being guaranteed to win all but one or two seats in Quebec. (The PCs won in 1979 with only one MP from Quebec - but we all know how long that survived, don't we?) With the Liberals guaranteed 72 or 73 seats in one province, that left the PCs desperately trying to win 72 or 73 more seats than the Liberals in the rest of Canada - an almost impossible task, even with a head start west of Manitoba.

But here's the thing: Quebec no longer sends 73 Liberal MPs to Ottawa. The Bloc has won most of Quebec's seats ever since the 1993 election, leaving the Liberals with around 35 Quebec MPs at most. The Bloc is far ahead of the Liberals this time around, and if Martin wins 25 Quebec seats, I think he'll be lucky.

That means the Conservatives would have to win 25 more seats than the Liberals in the rest of the country - hard, but not that hard. The Liberals will likely win most of the 32 seats in Atlantic Canada, but the Conservatives will win all but one or two of the 28 seats in Alberta, thereby cancelling out that advantage. SES now puts the Conservatives ten points ahead in Ontario, ahead by 6 in B.C. and ahead by 7 in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

If these numbers hold, I think we'd looking at a Conservative minority government. As for a majority, alas, Sari is right - you can't realistically do it without picking up at least a few Quebec seats.

But thanks to the Bloc, ironically, enough, Quebec no longer decides elections. I'd still prefer it if these miserable traitors didn't exist, but you can't deny that this time around, they've made things much more competitive.

Posted by damian at June 8, 2004 05:11 PM